The Te Deum of New Year’s Eve

James Monti

As many of our readers know, the final day of the calendar year has traditionally been marked by the solemn singing of the Church’s ancient hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum. The full story of precisely how this particular use of the Te Deum arose and spread has yet to be written. To date, as best as I can tell, there has not been any comprehensive study of this interesting subject. What we can do is piece together at least a partial picture of the history of the New Year’s Eve Te Deum.
The Te Deum is generally believed to have been authored by St. Nicetas of Remesiana (335-415). There was an earlier time when the hymn was thought to have been jointly composed by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine upon the occasion of the latter’s Baptism. The hymn has a tripartite structure, with verses 1 to 13 directed to the worship of the Holy Trinity, verses 14 to 21 directed to the worship of Christ, and verses 22 to 29 directed to the supplication of God for guidance, assistance and mercy.
For centuries the Te Deum has been sung as an addition to the early morning office of Matins on liturgical days marked by the singing or recitation of the Gloria at the Mass of the day. But it also has a long history of having been used on special occasions to offer and express communal gratitude to God for a particular favor or blessing bestowed. It is from this latter usage of the Te Deum that its singing on New Year’s Eve most likely arose.
During the Middle Ages, January 1 was perceived primarily as a day for commemorating the circumcision of Our Lord on the eighth day following His birth and as a major solemnity in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A particularly striking example of how this day was celebrated appears in a thirteenth century customary of the Church of St. Martin in the French city of Tours, which describes an amazing profusion of candles, lamps, and candelabras assembled and lit for this occasion, making it “one of the most brilliantly illuminated feasts of the year” (Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 294).
The Tours customary makes no mention of employing the Te Deum at the end of the evening offices of New Year’s Eve, nor have I been able to identify any medieval precedent for this practice. But this cursory assessment by no means excludes the possibility of its origin in the medieval period. Such a custom would have emerged from a heightened consciousness of the religious significance of the transition from one year to another. One piece of evidence for the admixture of reflection upon the change of year with the liturgical themes of January 1 is provided by a traditional English Christmastide carol sung to the melody of Greensleeves, “The Old Year Now Away is Fled,” which is traceable to a 1642 book of carols but is likely at least a few decades older:
“The old year now away is fled, / the new year it is entered; / then let us all our sins down tread, / and joyfully all appear . . . God send us a merry new year! / For Christ’s circumcision this day we keep, / who for our sins did often weep. / His hands and feet were wounded deep, / and his blessed side, with a spear. / His head they crowned then with thorn, / and at him they did laugh and scorn, / who for to save our souls was born; / God send us a happy new year!” (verses 1 and 2).
Our earliest explicit evidence of the New Year’s Eve Te Deum comes from Rome. The custom of the papal court attending a solemnized singing of the Te Deum on Pope St. Sylvester’s Day, December 31, is at least as old as the seventeenth century, when this custom is attested as taking place at the Jesuits’ Roman Church of the Jesu, according to the scholar Fabian Bassani (as related in his 2012 study, Musiche policorali nella Chiesa del Gesu: Aspetti di prassi esecutiva, in C. Giron-Panel and A.-M. Goulet, eds., La musique a Rome au XVIIe siecle: Etudes et perspectives de recherche, Rome, 2012).
In a book on the history of Rome’s Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli first published in 1736, the Franciscan priest and historian Casimiro of Rome (c. 1687-1749) describes a particularly beautiful observance of New Year’s Eve at this church featuring the Te Deum, adding moreover that what he recounts had been introduced there in the early 1600s:
“The last day of the year, after the Mass has been sung, the most august Sacrament is exposed upon the high altar, and in the evening after the sermon and the singing of Compline, the Te Deum is intoned, in thanksgiving for the benefits received from the Lord throughout the course of the year. This praiseworthy custom was introduced by one of our religious at nearly the beginning of the last century, who however wanted the Sacrament to be accompanied by 365 lights, exactly as many as the days of the year, as in fact it was always practiced at the time” (Memorie istoriche della Chiesa e Convento di S. Maria in Araceli di Roma, Rome, Tipografia della R.C.A., 1845, p. 510).
A late eighteenth century description of the solemnized Te Deum at the Jesuits’ Church of the Jesu appears in Francesco Cancellieri’s 1790 book, Descrizione delle Cappelle Pontificie e Cardinalizie di tutto l’anno:
“After [First] Vespers of the Circumcision, which is sung at the [Papal] Palace as usual, the Sacred College goes to the Church of the Jesu nobly prepared, and illuminated, in order to assist at the solemn Te Deum, which is sung in thanksgiving to the Most High for the benefits received throughout the course of the year… The Cardinals go two by two, attended by as many clerics in surplices, with lit torches, who precede them, and go to take their places according to the order of their seniority in the kneelers prepared before the high altar…” (Descrizione delle Cappelle Pontificie e Cardinalizie di tutto l’anno, Rome, Luigi Perego Salvioni, 1790, pp 219-220).
This custom of solemnly singing the Te Deum on New Year’s Eve spread to eighteenth century Portugal, where it was celebrated in the presence of the Portuguese royal family in Lisbon’s Jesuit Church of Saint Roque. In imitation of the musical grandeur with which the Te Deum was sung in Rome, the Saint Roque ceremony employed ambitious arrays of musicians, as in 1718, when four choirs with instrumental accompaniment were set to this task. Even more remarkable was the arrangement for New Year’s Eve of 1720, bringing together fifteen choirs situated on five separate stages to sing the “grand Te Deum.”
The 1968 Enchridion of Indulgences promulgated by Pope Saint Paul VI bestows a plenary indulgence for participation in a public recitation of the Te Deum on the last day of the year in thanksgiving for the blessings of the old year. It likewise grants a plenary indulgence for the public recitation of the hymn to the Holy Spirit Veni, Creator, Spiritus on the first day of the new year, a custom that appears to have its origin in the public recitation of this hymn by Pope Leo XIII on January 1, 1901 as an invocation of divine guidance for the new century that was just then beginning.
Those who are willing to look upon the course of their lives with the eyes of faith will discover much to be thankful for, both large and small. The great Spanish Dominican spiritual writer Venerable Louis of Grenada (1504-1588) had a lot to say about some of the smaller blessings we may take for granted, in particular the wonders of creation:
“What a great spectacle is this visible world if you realize that all the creatures in it are gifts sent to you from God. Even more, they are messages addressed to you from the Creator. Here God is; here He speaks to you; here He teaches you and seeks to draw you to Himself” (Venerable Louis of Grenada, Sinner’s Guide, bk. 1, pt. 1, chap. 2, in Summa of the Christian Life: Selected Texts from the Writings of Venerable Louis of Grenada, O.P., trans. and ed. Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., Saint Louis, MO, and London, B. Herder Book Co., 1954, vol. 1, p. 221).
Of course, among the very greatest blessings of any year is Our Lord’s infinitely sacred gift of His very self in the Most Holy Eucharist, with every single Mass celebrated in the course of the year across the face of the earth a reason for profound thanksgiving. In this context it does not seem out of place to cite here a beautiful employment of the Te Deum in the Eucharistic procession of Corpus Christi as prescribed in a 1731 ritual for the Czech diocese of Prague. At the conclusion of a procession marked by four benedictions given at four different stations along the way, the Te Deum is intoned as the celebrant carrying the monstrance returns to the church where the procession had begun. Having reached the high altar at the point when the first twenty-one verses of the Te Deum have been completed, the celebrant turns toward the people with the monstrance in his hands and sings three times the opening words of the twenty-second verse, “Save your people, O Lord,” each time raising his voice, to which the choir replies three times with the concluding words of verse 22, “And bless your inheritance.” At the third chanting of this verse, the celebrant bestows with the monstrance the final benediction of the procession (Rituale Romano-Pragense, part 2, Prague, Matthew Hoger, 1731, pp. 199-200).
We have reason to be grateful for everything God places upon our path, even the crosses, as a poem about the Te Deum of New Year’s Eve from nearly one hundred forty years ago observes:
“We thank Thee, Lord, adoringly we thank Thee, / For all the gifts Thou’st yielded unto us / In the gone year. Kneel we in love-awed silence, / Liking to render our thanksgiving thus. . . .
“Thus, Lord, we thank [you], not only for the favours, / But for the trials Thou hast sent instead; / Thou knowest best – relying on thy mercy, / Thou wilt not give us stones in place of bread” (Ruth O’Connor, The ‘Te Deum’ of New Year’s Eve,” Irish Monthly, vol. 12, no. 127, Jan. 1884, p. 48).
Let us thank God for every day and year He gives us.